


The Worst of the Winter

by telm_393



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Animal Death, Childhood Trauma, Control Issues, Epidemics, Friendship, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Heavy Angst, Loss, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, Team as Family, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17625968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: When he's young, Red Harvest lives through a couple of brutal winters.Then he lives through them again, and again, and again...





	The Worst of the Winter

**Author's Note:**

> So, I am triumphantly posting a fill for Bad Things Happen Bingo! Someone requested "Shaking & Shivering" with Red Harvest, and months after the fact, it is done! 
> 
> Am I ever going to stop writing about epidemics? Probably not, but I did get a lot of it out of my system with this one. Incidentally, if there's anything here that's glaringly wrong just in general, tell me, I want to know.
> 
> In any case, mind the tags. The animals that die are horses, and not in the present day part. There's also some mentions of hunger/starvation, and some minor suicidal ideation.
> 
> As usual, thank you to within_a_dream for betaing.

Red Harvest is little enough that he’s only just learning how to ride a horse, and he’s tilted his head up to look at the snowfall. It’s pretty and new and pure, and he is mesmerized until his mother makes her way out of the tipi and distracts him.

Red Harvest is very aware of everything.

His mother takes his shoulders. She smiles a little, but it’s a shaky smile, and he doesn’t see it, because though he feels her presence keenly, he’s still not turned to face her. “My son, it’s cold,” she says in a soft voice. “You’re shivering.”

He is, but he doesn’t mind. The cold feels clean. He says, “This is good.”

She says, “You need to come in now, or you won’t feel well later.”

He tells her, though not in protest, “I like this.”

She tightens her hands on his shoulders and pulls him inside, but when everyone is sleeping he crawls out of the tipi again, this time with a blanket around his shoulders, and draws pictures in the snow.

+

Just a few winters later, Red Harvest’s mother and father get sick. Lots of other people do too. After a while it seems like most everyone does, then or the winter after.

Red Harvest doesn’t. Instead he hunts as much as he’s capable of hunting, which isn’t much, and tries to take care of the horses and the little children. He does anything he can do to get through it all. He learns all about life from the quiet violence around him, witnessing the death from the outskirts of the camp, wrapped up in a fraying buffalo hide because the cold doesn’t feel clean anymore.

Red Harvest has known death since as far back as he can remember, because he sees things and people, people especially, die all the time—from war, from old age, from long illnesses, from starvation as the buffalo’s numbers fall, but death becomes different during those winters.

People, young people, die for no good reason. They wither away like leaves and get chewed up by invisible dogs. Their bodies burn. There are not enough women to wail or to bleed. Warriors die one after the other, but there’s no battle. Black bile and watery blood run through the snow, and Red Harvest thinks that maybe the spirits get frozen by the cold, because they’re never there when they could be of use.

When his father gets sick, Red Harvest sees him ask his guardian spirit for help, but the spirit does nothing, and Red Harvest starts to think that maybe guardians aren’t enough to protect anyone when it matters most. Maybe they don’t realize that there are more ways to die than in battle. Maybe they all hibernate like bears. Maybe they aren’t real. Maybe they just hate Red Harvest and are taking it out on everyone around him. In the end he never meets a single one.

His father gets sicker and sicker until he dies, nearly mad with pain, and his mother, already sick, weeps and then just gets sicker until she’s gone from one second to the other. Only one of his father’s wives survives that winter, and she is gone the next.

Red Harvest thinks it’s sad that she lived just long enough to see everyone die.

Red Harvest doesn’t see all of his kin after they die—because so many of them do and death is something to keep away from, though it’s mostly useless to even try—but he sees his mother and father. He insists.

At first he feels nothing but disgust at their dead bodies, because they’re eaten up by sores and they look like monsters. Still he stays with them for longer than anyone likes, bites when his father’s wife tries to pull him away, because even though it takes him a while he finds their faces in the mess. When he does he feels like he’s being torn to pieces, a pain that hits him so hard he can’t even breathe.

He doesn’t let himself get pulled away, in the end—instead he runs, far as he can from where they’re finally resting. He only stops when he finds himself near where their remaining horses have huddled together, and only then because he trips over the leg of a pony who is sprawled out in the snow and falls next to one of the living mares. She knows him, but now she seems to notice him about as much as he notices her, instead nosing hopefully at the dead pony’s neck.

He puts his hands out to break his fall, and his hands sink into the cold as he stares down at the dirty snow, swallowing bile at the smell of manure and rotting flesh. His knotted hair hangs over his face and he gasps, he can’t get enough air, the snow is soaking his knees and his hands are numb and he is convulsing in the cold.

The horses whinny and shake their dull manes and hoof at the ground. Maybe they think he’s dying. Maybe they just want food and help. Maybe they want to run but are too weak, just like Red Harvest. So many of the other horses have left. They must be tired of dying.

He wishes he had anything to give them.

He coughs and gasps and his eyes sting with tears from all the effort he’s making to breathe, and the only things in the world are him and the winter and the horses and death. He gags, digging his numb fingers into the snow. Soon the fingerprints will be all covered up, soon he’ll be all covered up, if he dies here. Maybe he should just lie down, maybe he should just…

Something warm and wet nudges at his neck, and he hears the big mare that’s been next to him let out a long, sighing breath, and everything goes still. He’s so tired. He breathes in with effort, and this time it works, cold air sliding down his burning throat. The mare noses at his hair like she was doing to her dead friend before, and he sinks into the warmth and the life she has inside of her, sits back on his heels and breathes deep and even, opens his eyes and stares out in front of him at the swirling snow.

It’ll never stop falling.

His parents, his people, they’ve gone to a land where Red Harvest thinks it’s probably never cold. But he hasn’t. It seems unfair.

The snow melts on his face and soaks his hair and it makes him feel like there’s blood or dirt or both all over him. It makes him want to tear his hair out, but first he stumbles to his feet and puts his forehead against the mare’s neck. “You should go,” he whispers. “You should all go. There’s nothing left.”

He stumbles back to camp and wraps himself up in buffalo hides and waits and waits for the cold to kill him. It doesn’t.

Life is cruel, and winter is the cruelest part of it, and it becomes part of him too. It rests inside of him and freezes everything once it comes around.

Nothing is safe. Red Harvest knows this well, but he still does everything he can to protect himself, cuts all his hair off so that he can keep at least one part of himself closer to untouched the next winter, when illness surges again and it truly becomes the beginning of the end of everything he’s ever known.

_I do what I can._

After that, once he and the few of his band who are left are able to find others who didn’t suffer quite so much during those times and join them, that one of the most important parts of protecting himself and his people is being isolated, which isn’t very difficult. It turns out he has a natural talent for making others leave him alone, and once the elders send him away he’s about as alone as it gets.

At least with no one around him he won’t get sick, and neither will they.

They can’t afford to. There’s not so many of them left, and most of them aren’t even the same people he knew as a child. He’s doing the right thing.

He does what he can.

+

Then there’s Rose Creek, and the others, and they want him around, and, for some reason, Red Harvest wants to be around, and then he’s not alone anymore.

He might even be happy. He has what’s becoming a home, especially once Vasquez starts building (and building, and building) a cabin that all of them eventually drift towards—Vasquez calls it a homestead, but Faraday says that it’s not a homestead and Vasquez is just bad at English, and Red Harvest doesn’t know who to believe, so he doesn’t dwell on it.

It’s a little strange, Red Harvest thinks, a group of men living together, but he doesn’t mind. He’s found his path, and his path involves living with seven other men in or at the very least around a very large cabin, so he goes with it.

Red Harvest helps with making the house, and then Horne does too when he gets better. Sam’s not all that good at building things, and Goodnight really, really isn’t, and at first Red Harvest isn’t much better—building things is women’s work—but he’s a fast learner, and the cabin, or most of it at least, gets built quicker than it seems it should.

( _I do what I can,_ he reassures himself, whispers it to the horses when he takes care of them. _I do what I can._ )

Red Harvest doesn’t spend most of his time at the homestead. He starts going off on bounties with Sam and Vasquez. The others aren’t really well enough for that yet, but they make enough money off of the bounties and Vasquez’s carpentry and a little off of the garden Horne starts tending and the vests he makes when Red Harvest hunts to keep the horses at their best. Besides, the people of Rose Creek are always giving them things.

It’s not a bad life, and Red Harvest is caught off guard by how easy it is to fall into it in such a short time, over the long warm months. Most of the others complain to no end about the heat, enough that Red Harvest starts to just walk away when they get on the topic of the weather, but Red Harvest much prefers the heat to the cold.

Then the colors around him begin to fade away, and as the weather cools the leaves start falling from the trees. The way the leaves crunch beneath him make him feel off balance. The death is coming, the cold inside him is growing. He doesn’t think about it, just hunts and wanders the open spaces around town and rides his horse, who is happy and well-fed and strong, and helps Vasquez with his constant projects because the cabin is fine but Vasquez never seems to think it is.

Red Harvest goes off on a bounty with just Sam, and Sam says, as though it’s nothing, “I reckon we’ll stay home for the worst of the winter. We’re comfortable enough there, aren’t we?”

Red Harvest feels a flash of irritation. He’s been trying not to think of the winter.

“We don’t have a home,” he says, staring into the fire he started.

Sam is quiet for a long time, and then he responds, “Then we’ll stay in the place where we’ve all been living.”

Red Harvest shrugs. “I don’t care.”

The winter is everywhere. It doesn’t matter where he is.

+

It’s a snowy winter. Or rather, Red Harvest has just never lived in the mountains, and didn’t consider that it snows more there. He wishes they’d built the cabin somewhere else, but they didn’t and he said nothing against it, so that’s his fault. He still thinks it’s probably a bad winter.  

The days end so early that Red Harvest can barely do anything, and the others seem like they’re doing well enough. They even seem to like the snow, for some unknown reason, which is well enough, because then Red Harvest doesn’t have to leave the cabin as much to care for the horses. He finds himself constantly exhausted, even though he sleeps plenty.

It’s the dreams that won’t let him rest, dreams of days and nights long past, soaked in sick and blood, rotting flesh, snow, horses galloping through the snow, dropping dead, sick and stumbling—

An empty camp.

He’s little and useless and there is nothing to eat, nothing at all, and the snow is falling. The hunger is a living thing in him, writhing in his stomach like rats, and he’s worried they’ll chew right through him. He can already feel them. He needs to get food soon before they burst out of his body. The last thing he wants to do is kill a horse, but it’s the last thing he can do, so he grips a knife and goes, except every time he finds a horse he has to run because they charge at him, they gnash their teeth and he thinks they’ll eat him before he eats them.

Desperate, he looks for a dead horse, because they’re everywhere, the only bodies are horses and Red Harvest, and he finds one lying on her side. A mare. He’s seen her before, he knows her, couldn’t save her, and he kneels next to her, trembling, and says, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…_

He wakes up choking and gasping and feeling sick, and he sits in his room and stares at the far wall. The sun is just starting to rise. It’ll be dark in no time at all, and of course it’s still snowing. Red Harvest can’t be inside anymore.

Shaking, Red Harvest pulls on his shoes and walks downstairs and right out the door, purposeful. The stars are still shining. The snow isn’t falling hard, and Red Harvest lifts himself onto the porch banister, his feet just barely scraping the earth, and stares out at the snow, studies the way it’s piled onto the ground, the way the sun shines off of it, almost blinding. It glitters. It’s pretty.

Red Harvest notices the door open before it even starts to open, and Vasquez steps outside onto the porch.

“Hey,” Vasquez says. “I thought I saw someone here.” He walks over to lean against the banister next to Red Harvest, and lights a cigar.

Red Harvest makes a face without thinking. He hates the smell of cigars. Vasquez chuckles. “Sorry,” he says, though he isn’t sorry at all.

He and Red Harvest stay there in companionable silence until Vasquez is done with his cigar and crushes it under his foot. He shudders. “It’s very cold,” he says, and Red Harvest shrugs. “Don’t you think you should put a jacket on, maybe? So you don’t freeze to death?” he asks pointedly, and Red Harvest shrugs again.

He’s used to freezing, and he’s been colder anyway.

“Okay,” Vasquez mutters before he walks back inside. “Come in soon, then.”

Red Harvest doesn’t answer, instead sinking into his own mind, his own mixed-up memories, and he doesn’t go back inside. He can’t seem to move. Eventually Vasquez is back next to him again, and Red Harvest feels a little annoyed. He’s trying to think. Trying to shake off the dream, though there’s a part of him that’s not sure if he’s still dreaming. He runs his fingers through his hair. He can’t still be dreaming. He’s grown, and in his dreams his hair is always long.

“It’s beautiful,” Vasquez says, looking out at the snow falling gently. “Don’t you think?”

“No,” Red Harvest responds.

“Come in, then.”

“Won’t change anything.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“Go away.”

“You’re going to get yourself sick.”

“I never get sick.” Red Harvest feels his chest tighten. He breathes in and out through his teeth. The sharp cold air makes everything hurt, but he lets it be.

In the cold it’s hard to know what to do with himself, so he just does things. Red Harvest remembers being out in the cold a lot, back then when everyone was sick, because he knew that being too close would just make him die too. That’s when he learned that touching was just a way to spread disease.

Red Harvest has heard some complaints lately from the others that they’re catching cold. They don’t seem worried about it, but Red Harvest knows they’re wrong. If Red Harvest is close to them, he’ll just get sick too, though he’s more concerned about Vasquez, because Vasquez is always touching people. Doesn’t he know that that’s how you get sick? They live too close together, this was a mistake.

“You’re shivering.” Vasquez says, pulling Red Harvest out of his thoughts.

“Who cares?”

“I care.”

“Stop.”

“I…Rojito, you can’t just tell me to stop feeling things.”

He shrugs.

“If I ask nicely, will you come inside?”

“No.”

“If Sam or Jack ask nicely, will you come inside?”

Red Harvest clenches his jaw. He doesn’t want to see Sam or Jack. They’re better at getting him to talk. “You’re all going to get sick,” Red Harvest says very clearly, but he says it in Comanche, and Vasquez doesn’t understand.

“Will you take the coat at least?”

Red Harvest had barely noticed that Vasquez even had an extra coat with him, a heavy thing that’s probably going to be too big. “Will it make you leave me alone?”

“Yes,” Vasquez says, clearly through gritted teeth.

Red Harvest takes the cowhide jacket from Vasquez and wraps it around his shoulders.

It is warmer.

“There, that’s all I wanted,” Vasquez mutters, and he finally leaves.

Not true. He wanted Red Harvest to come inside.

Red Harvest feels a little smug for driving him away instead, though there’s a part of him that says that being alone isn’t really something to be proud of, it’s just easier. He hates that part of him.

Eventually, the door opens again, and Sam’s on the porch now, and Red Harvest sighs and then shudders without meaning to. The cold’s made him so numb he hasn’t even realized how much he’s shaking. It irritates him. He hates how he stops noticing things when it snows. “Did Vasquez send you?” he asks, and his voice comes out as colorless as the world around him.

“Nah, I got worried all on my own,” Sam says dryly. “You’ve been out here for hours.”

“It’s not hours,” Red Harvest mutters.

“It is, though. Night-time’s coming. Even Jack came in from his tent, you don’t have much of an excuse to still be out here, you’ll catch your death.”

Red Harvest doesn’t respond, just notices that Sam’s right, the sun is going down. He’s not sure if he didn’t notice that, or if he did and just didn’t care.

When he was little, he liked watching the snow fall, when he was a child he had his mother to take him back inside, and now he doesn’t even remember her face.

Sometimes, mostly times like now when everything is empty and freezing, he feels like he’s had enough.

Like he should just walk into the snow and lie down and go to sleep and see if he can make his peace with it, finally, because he doesn’t think he’s been at peace since he could look at the snow and find it beautiful, since the cold felt clean on his skin. Far before he started having dreams like the one that woke him apparently hours ago.

He doesn’t say any of this, because the others have been treating him a little like a spooked horse lately, and they don’t like it when he talks about his own death.

“I do not think I will ever make peace with the winter,” Red Harvest admits.

Sam takes a deep breath and leans against the banister where Red Harvest is sitting. “The year I went to war, the winter was brutal. For everyone.”

“Everyone was sick. No war for us, just dying.” Useless.

“I remember the foot soldiers left blood in the snow,” Sam offers, and Red Harvest nods.

“I remember it all like bad dreams.”

“That what you been having nightmares about, Red?”

Red Harvest doesn’t answer, because he didn’t even know Sam knew he was having bad dreams.

“It’s been a long time since all that,” Sam offers.

Red Harvest snorts. “Does it matter?”

The sickness left something evil inside of him, and it is eating him alive. He tries to avoid it, but there’s no way to run from himself and all the worst parts of life when they’re laid bare in the cold, and the death infected him. Terrible things stayed inside of him and dug their way into every part of his body until not even a medicine man could make him better, until he ended up here, looking for the faraway past in the snowfall, trying to make himself feel right again.

“You have us now. Are we so bad?”

“No. But…” Red Harvest trails off, embarrassed. He’s supposed to have a practical mind, and he’s certainly not supposed to allow himself to be consumed with anything so useless as sadness or worry, and yet here he is.

“But?” Sam asks.

“You get sick too. The others, they—”

“Come on, Red, you mean those colds? Those are nothing. You can’t just think we’re all gonna die when we catch cold.”

“And if you do?”

Sam hesitates for a long time, and then he admits, “Well, dying happens. No one can promise we won’t.”

“I hope I die first,” Red Harvest tells Sam, and then immediately wonders if it was the right thing to say.

Sam takes it in stride, though. “I think we all hope we’ll die first.”

Red Harvest takes a deep breath, but it’s too shallow and he doesn’t really breathe in anything but wind and snow. He takes another gasping breath and then coughs.

In response, Sam puts his hand on Red Harvest’s shoulder and tugs him forward so that he has to put his feet on the ground or fall.

“Okay, son, you stay out here and we’ll be down a warrior. Come in.” Sam’s words are clipped and he doesn’t let go of Red Harvest even when Red Harvest gives him the kind of look that makes most everyone else back down.

You need to come in now, or you won’t feel well later.

Red Harvest looks for the voice in the swirling snow, but there’s nobody there, and Sam tightens his hand even more.

Red Harvest tries to lean away, but Sam won’t move. “I’m not joking, Red Harvest, come on.”

“Fine,” Red Harvest spits out, irritation flaring in his chest, the first warm thing he’s felt all day. He pulls away hard, but walks into the cabin so that Sam will stop bothering him.

Inside, Red Harvest is greeted by Goodnight and Billy at the table, heads bowed together in conversation. They turn almost at the same time to look at him and Sam, and Billy raises his eyebrows and Goodnight furrows his. “What happened to you?” Billy asks.

“Is it not clear?” Red Harvest snaps, and now he is keenly aware of how much he’s shivering, of the wetness in his hair. He takes off the coat and throws it on the table, his rage barely controlled because he doesn’t know where it’s from. There’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing that’s his choice here, nothing measured, nothing at all. He’s just in here, cooped up like one of Emma’s chickens, and the indignity of it makes him want to hurt something. But he has too much control to do that. But he has no control at all.

“You’re shaking,” Goodnight says, concern in his voice.

“He’s just cold,” Sam says. “He’s gonna go to bed.”

“No,” Red Harvest says. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here! I am here! I am here, and I’m…I’m _thinking._ There’s not enough to think about all…stuck here. But I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” and his words are tripping over each other and if he had something to do, if he had somewhere to go, he wouldn’t be losing control. He doesn’t lose control, he’s a warrior, it’s not what he does, but he doesn’t have anything he can actually fight. There’s just him, and the cold.

“What are you thinking about?” Sam asks, reminding Red Harvest that there’s just him, and the cold, and the others, and he doesn’t know if that’s worse. Billy was sick, he’s not sick anymore. Sometimes people get better. Red Harvest saw people get better, he saw people live, saw their scars. But plenty of them died of the other sickness after anyway. There was nothing he could do.

“You know,” Red Harvest says. “We spoke. Just now, we talked.”

Sam sighs and presses his fingers against his forehead. “But you’re just more upset.” He sounds frustrated. “I thought we talked about the…sickness.”

“No, we didn’t,” Red Harvest hisses. “We didn’t. There was _more._ There is more. That was about now, and maybe no one is dying now, but they were dying then. You said…you said it happened a long time ago, and I asked if it mattered, and you didn’t answer, but it does! You know it does. Everything happened a long time ago. You…what happened, what happened with you, it happened a long time ago also, and still it took you forever to make your peace with it.”

Sam swallows, his shoulders tensing and his jaw clenching. Red Harvest is jealous of him. There was someone he could fight, someone he could kill for ruining his family. Red Harvest doesn’t have that. He doesn’t have a person to aim at. There’s no wicked man who killed his parents, no one who ruined him. No one to blame but maybe the white men of many, many years ago, or the sickness, or the Great Father, and Red Harvest doesn’t even know if he exists.

Maybe Red Harvest did it himself, he thinks, and that seems like something to consider. “What if it was me? What if I made it worse?” Red Harvest asks, not even trying to speak English. He can’t go fast enough in that language. “What if I made the disease worse by being alive? Being around?”

Sam frowns. “Red Harvest, that is not possible,” he says in Comanche.

“I didn’t even get sick and then get better, I just didn’t get sick. That isn’t supposed to happen.”

“But it did. You can’t be the only person who never got sick,” Sam says. There’s unease in his eyes and the set of his shoulders, as if Red Harvest is doing something very strange, but all he’s doing is thinking.

“That’s true,” Red Harvest mutters, mind racing. It’s true, but less people didn’t get sick than people who got better and less people didn’t get sick than people who died. Very suddenly, that seems meaningful. He understands. “If I’d gotten sick and died, less other people would’ve died.”

“What?” Sam asks, slipping back into English as his face crumples into confusion. “No. You just would’ve died too.”

“Maybe there was a mistake,” Red Harvest says almost before Sam finishes his sentence. He feels lit up with the revelation. “So many people died, that wasn’t right, not even for a bad season. It made no sense. None of it made sense. But it would have made more sense if the people who had not gotten sick had gotten sick. And the other people hadn’t.”

“What?” Sam asks again, looking at Red Harvest like he’s crazy. “No, you weren’t supposed to die.”

“Why?” Red Harvest asks, heart beating wildly, and Sam looks taken aback, so Red Harvest starts speaking English again. Maybe Sam will understand him better that way. “What if I _was_ supposed to die? Because...for one of me…more than one other person would have lived. Maybe that’s why the winter wants me dead.”

Sam is usually so calm, and now he just looks so confused he’s almost panicked. “Wait—nothing’s trying to kill you, you’re not making any sense.”

Red Harvest groans, running his hands over his head, agitated. He speaks very precisely when he says, “It’s not me not making sense. There was fault…it was somebody’s fault, it had to be. How do you not understand?”

“Because there’s nothing to understand, Red, you’re talking crazy, you’re tired.” Sam pauses for a moment and takes a deep breath. He says, “You should get some sleep.”

Red Harvest is ready to scream. He doesn’t, but his voice rises when he says, “Stop telling me to sleep! It didn’t make sense! It wasn’t right!”

“Red!” someone says, and Red Harvest had nearly forgotten that it wasn’t just him and Sam in the room, that he’d seen Goodnight and Billy at the table when he came in. He thought Billy was sick, but then, it doesn’t take long to get better from catching cold. Billy’s not the one who’s speaking, though. It’s Goodnight, which makes sense. Goodnight’s the talker between those two. “Red Harvest, listen to me!”

He’s nearly yelling, and Red Harvest turns on his heel to face him. “What?” he snaps. He’s shaking. He’s not even that cold anymore, barely feels the cold anymore, but he’s still shaking like his bones are shifting inside of him, an earthquake in his body. It’s going to split him open.

Goodnight looks at him and there’s no confusion in his eyes that Red Harvest can see, nothing guarded or frightened.

“I understand,” Goodnight says softly, and the words make something loosen in Red Harvest’s chest. Sam goes quiet, and then it’s just Red Harvest’s ragged breathing and Goodnight’s words in the silence. “You’re saying that the people who didn’t get sick were supposed to die because then it would’ve killed a more reasonable amount of people.”

Red Harvest lets out a relieved breath. “Yes.”

Goodnight nods. “It makes sense.” Sam tries to protest, but Goodnight raises a hand to cut him off. “I mean, it makes sense on its face. But it doesn’t matter.”

Red Harvest rolls his neck back and puts his hands against his head to keep it from exploding from the frustration. “Why not?”

“Because it happened anyway,” Goodnight says, and Red Harvest blinks rapidly at the ceiling, the pressure is his head almost unbearable. Goodnight presses on. “Did it make sense? I certainly don’t think so. But it’s what happened.”

Red Harvest lowers his head to look at Goodnight, who looks steadily back. “Do _you_ understand?” Goodnight asks, and Red Harvest doesn’t know how to respond, because he doesn’t want to understand.

“I know what you’re doing,” Goodnight says. “I’ve done it too. Sam’s done it, Jack’s done it—I think we’ve all done it. You’re convincing yourself that just because everything _could have_ happened differently and you think it would’ve been better that way, it _should have_ happened differently.”

“Right,” Red Harvest says in faint response.

“But that’s not how it is. Look, was everyone who died meant to die? Hell, I don’t know. But I know you weren’t.”

 _“Why not?”_ Red Harvest asks, but unlike Sam, Goodnight has an answer.

“Because you didn’t. You just didn’t. It happened how it happened, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s over.”

“No, it’s not,” Red Harvest says.

Goodnight understands. He nods. “I know, Red. Trust me when I say I know, but the reality is that it’s over, no matter how it feels. You can ask why it happened like it did a million times, and you will _never_ find out. There’s no making things right, because that’s just not in your power, and...I’m sorry, but in your case you couldn’t do anything about it in the first place. You never even did anything wrong.”

Red Harvest looks down at the floor and runs his hand down his short, soft hair. He remembers the first time he cut it off, and it would’ve grown back by now but he just kept cutting it over and over again and—

“That hurts,” he says, clumsily trying to put it all into words when there are things he’s never tried to say even in his own language. They’re talking of things beyond their understanding, and it’s tearing Red Harvest to pieces. “It’s the worst part. I couldn’t do anything. I fixed nothing. I did what I could…but what could I do?”

He doesn’t know if he’s asking a question with an answer, but Goodnight answers anyway. “Not much.”

Red Harvest clenches his jaw, nods his head. He takes a deep breath and it’s shaky when he inhales and ragged when he exhales. “Not much,” he agrees. “I hate the winter,” he admits, finally. “I am…I am not…helpless. But I was, and against some things I still am, and…I remember.” The words are difficult to say, but he has to say them. He’s tired of the silence.  

“There are some things we’re all helpless before,” Goodnight says gently. “But you’re right. You’re not helpless now, and you have our help too, don’t you? You can get through this. Winter ends, you know it does.”

Red Harvest wipes a stray tear away. “I do not talk about this,” he says before trailing off.

“You’ve never had anyone to talk to before,” Goodnight says, and he’s probably right.

Now that Red Harvest’s said it all, now that his words are out in the open, something is different. He’s spoken for himself, and for the himself of his childhood, and he feels terrible. He feels exhausted. He feels like something’s changed. Dislodged. He sits down heavily on a chair and puts his head in his hands. He stays there for a long time.

“I should go,” he mutters after a while, and he stands up and says nothing when he drifts away to his room, but he does catch Goodnight’s eye.

They nod to each other, and Goodnight gives him a smile.

When he’s in his room, staring at the ceiling, he finds that he’s not shaking anymore. The trembling that’s been crawling over his body for what seems a very long time has ceased.

He takes stock of what he has.

He’s not alone here. He is surrounded by alive people, and most of them shouldn’t even be alive, considering what happened to them in battle. But they are. It’s just how it happened. Sometimes good things happen.

Red Harvest has nothing but himself and the winter and the others, and if there’s something that he’s sure of, it’s that he’s glad for them.

He goes to sleep.

Whatever it is he dreams about, he doesn’t remember it when he wakes up.


End file.
